Too Much ‘Good Effort’ Praise Backfires Too

What did the study do?

Xu et al. (2024) surveyed parents of 126 children aged 4–6 about their praise and children's persistence. Mueller & Dweck (1998) ran six experiments with more than 400 fifth-graders, praising children for effort or for intelligence, then offering hard or easy follow-up tasks and a failure set.

What did it find?

• Xu et al.: the process-to-person praise ratio had an inverted U-shaped link with persistence — too much of either kind reduced it; persistence was highest when process praise slightly outweighed person praise.
• Mueller & Dweck: about 90% of effort-praised children chose the harder, learning-rich task, while the majority of intelligence-praised children chose the easy task.
• After failure, intelligence-praised children enjoyed the work less, persisted less and performed worse; effort-praised children improved.
• About 38% of intelligence-praised children misreported their scores to another school, versus about 13% of effort-praised children.

What it didn't prove

The 1998 studies were experiments, so their praise effects are causal as reported; the 2024 praise-balance study is observational, phrased as linked to. Neither paper says praise is bad — the finding is about balance and type.

Frequently asked questions

The takeaway

Aim for the balance the data found: process praise a little ahead of person praise — specific, honest, and never a flood.

This site explains studies for general information — it isn't medical or parenting advice for your specific child.

Keep exploring

This episode also lives on these library pages: